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Looking back on 2018 crop challenges

Note: You can listen to my conversation with Jenny Rees by clicking on the Soundcloud link above.

The 2018 growing season has been an unusual one. Although timely rains have been a saving grace for many, the season has still been rife with challenges.

In the first live recording of Down in the Weeds at Husker Harvest Days, Nebraska Farmer visited with Jenny Rees, Nebraska Extension educator, to discuss some of these challenges, including weeds, fungal and bacterial diseases, and volunteer corn, which stemmed from a high amount of downed corn in 2017.

"We were talking last year about grazing cattle on those acres. What we found is even when we had 60 bushels on the ground or more, the cattle only ended up eating about half of it in a lot of these cases. So we still had a lot of downed corn on the ground even after that. So, people tried to manage it through grazing; they tried to manage it through baling cornstalks," said Rees, adding that some growers managed volunteer corn in 2018 by switching to soybeans.

"Going to soybeans, that's a much easier option, because then we have a way to kill the volunteer corn. For the guys who chose to do corn-on-corn, that was more of a challenge this year. We did see quite a bit of that as well, where it was corn-on-corn. And in those situations, we were dealing more with either looking at a different trait for the corn they were using, or another option was cultivating,” she said.